Category: News

Playgon said in addition to allowing the company to generate revenue through previously announced agreements with Malta-licensed entities, the licence would also increase its credibility as a trusted supplier in Europe and other markets globally.

Playgon said it would now launch its live dealer technology solutions throughout Europe and other regulated markets, with core live dealer games including baccarat, roulette, and blackjack.

A previously agreed deal with B2B casino supplier Swintt will now see the business able to offer Playgon’s technology to its operator customers.

“With our additional type 1 license secured from the MGA, we are cleared to go live and begin generating revenue,” said Darcy Krogh, chief executive of Playgon Games.

“We have already secured several commitments from both operators and aggregators that see the tremendous value in our technology and have patiently been waiting for us to get our type 1 licence.

“We anticipate going live in the coming days with some of these groups allowing access to what we believe is the most innovative and exciting mobile live dealer technology available in the market.”

Krogh added that as the business continues to market its live dealer technology to operators, it is seeing overwhelming demand for the product.

Playgon Interactive’s acquisition by software supplier Global Daily Fantasy Sports was completed in June last year, in a deal worth CAD$9.5m (£5.4m/€6.3m).

The supplier subsequently rebranded the business as Playgon Games in July.

PPC Monitor enables regular monitoring of desktop and mobile PPC adverts to detect non-compliant or misleading marketing practices by affiliates.

The new tool identifies affiliates bidding on client brand names, hijacking traffic and using their own tracking codes to intercept traffic.

Rightlander’s tool follows each link, analyses redirects looking for tracking codes and identifies all target landing pages.

The monitor can then determine which affiliates are using an operator brand to intercept traffic through their own tracking links or redirecting to third parties.

To complement the new PPC Monitor, Rightlander has also launched IGRG ‘Prohibited Terms’, which monitors UK desktop and mobile PPC ads to detect and identify affiliates bidding on the list of ‘prohibited terms’ provided by the Betting and Gaming Council.

“This area of marketing has long been a high revenue generator for affiliates and operators alike and it is not uncommon for ads to contain non-compliant copy, misleading information or even to deploy devious redirects,” Rightlander founder Ian Sims said.

“Often appearing at the top of search results, this content is highly visible and presents a significant risk to brands operating with affiliates in regulated territories.”

The research from the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) with Professor David Forrest and Professor Ian McHale of the University of Liverpool examined 140,000 online betting and gaming accounts between July 2018 and June 2019. 

The 140,000 accounts came from random samples from seven different operators. The seven operators involved hold 85% of British online betting market share and 37.5% in gaming.

The research found that while 85% betting accounts spent less than £200 on betting and 90% of gaming accounts had either an overall win or loss of less than £500, a small number of accounts were responsible for a very large portion of overall losses.

It said that 0.7% of accounts used for betting and 1.2% of gaming accounts lost £5,000 or more in the year and 4% of gaming accounts lost more than £500 in a single session. This, it said, would represent 60,000 betting accounts and 47,000 gaming accounts nationally.

Similarly, the 5% of accounts with the largest losses generated 70% of overall gross gambling yield (GGY) in the sample. 

Among betting accounts, 0.1% lost £20,000 or more in the year and 0.2% between £10,000 and £20,000. A further 0.4% lost between £5,000 and £10,000. The 10% of betting customers with the highest stakes generated 79% of betting GGY.

While there was not a similar breakdown of extremely large losses for gaming customers, NatCen said that 0.3% of overall customers lost between £10,000 and £20,000; 0.1% lost between £20,000 and £50,000 and less than 0.1% lost more than £50,000. 20.5% of customers were net winners.

Of the total sample, 4% received some sort of social responsibility interaction, usually by email. This included 36% of customers who spend more than £2,000, with 0.8% of this group receiving a phone call because of social responsibility reasons.

While 94% of online betting GGY was from men and 6% women, 26% of gaming GGY came from women and 74% men. Accounts which spent more than £5,000 predominantly belonged to men, with the most common age category being in the player’s 40s.

Participation in online gambling was higher in more deprived areas than less deprived areas. However, gambling spend was similar across all deprivation levels.

Football and horse racing were by far the most popular sports for betting in terms of accounts playing bet and betting yield. The majority of gaming accounts and spend were focused on slots.

“This research was able to analyse and assess an unprecedented source of information on how people in Great Britain gamble and opens up numerous opportunities to further understand people’s gambling habits. These interim findings are just the first stage and future research will provide a greater opportunity to understand the risk factors associated with gambling behaviour.” 

Available as of yesterday (11 March), players in the state will be able to wager on a wide range of sports and access a selection of bet types, including live, in-play wagering.

New customers who make a deposit will also benefit from a risk-free sports bet of up to $2,021, with players able to access the app and website from anywhere inside Tennessee.

“As we head into one of the most exciting times of the year for sports fans, the William Hill app will make March moments even more interesting for Tennessee bettors,” William Hill US president of digital Kenneth Fuchs said.

“We will have thousands of markets available, including for your local favourites, live in-game betting, and daily promotions and bonuses for players.”

Tennessee becomes the 12 US jurisdiction in which William Hill has launched its online and mobile sports betting products.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

The amount represents a 16.8% increase on the $180.9m wagered in December and is the highest monthly total since the state opened its regulated market on November 1 last year.

For the first time since the market launched, the Tennessee Education Lottery published adjusted gross revenue, which amounted to $21.8m for the month. Previously, the Lottery had only released details of handle, winnings and tax.

Earlier estimations suggested revenue reached $13.9m in December and $13.2m in November.

Players won a total of $190.4m in from sports betting in January, while licensed operators paid $4.3m in tax.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

“The board of BetIndex Limited has consulted with external legal and financial advisors, and the [GB] and Jersey Gambling Commissions,” it said. “The decision has been made to suspend the platform.

“We are pursuing a restructuring arrangement to be agreed with our stakeholders including, most importantly, our community.  We are preparing this through an administration with insolvency practitioners Begbies Traynor, to seek the best outcome for customers with the goal of continuing the platform in a restructured form.”

It said any restructuring agreement may see customers receive equity in BetIndex, board representation for customers and a new management team put in place.

“The board have at all times been seeking the best way to sustain the platform as we believed a recovery was not only possible but also in the best interests of our customers,” it continued. “This decision is deeply regrettable, and is the outcome we were seeking to avoid by restructuring dividends. 

“However, we believe it is the most responsible route forward for our community given the situation as it has developed.”

Begbies Taylor will issue a statement in the next 10 days with more information on the administration process.

Football Index account funds are held in a standalone trading account separate from BetIndex’s general accounts. Trust arrangements are in place to offer protection of these funds but the operator said there is “no guarantee that all funds will be repaid in the event of insolvency”.

However, the operator’s terms and conditions say that the value of player shares purchased are “not stored in any account or otherwise protected as they are sums at risk”.

The Gambling Commission announced it suspended the operator’s licence after it conducted a review into the operator’s licence following changes to the operator’s dividend structure that it said were necessary to keep the platform “sustainable”. 

The Commission said it had “concerns activities may have been carried on in purported reliance on the licence, but not in accordance with a condition of the licence, and that Football Index may not be suitable to carry on with licensed activities.

“We have made it clear to the operator that as the investigation progresses, we expect it to focus on treating consumers fairly and keeping them fully informed of any developments which impact them,” it added.

The regulations, published in the Corrientes government’s official gazette last week, will allow for online casino and bingo, as well as multiple forms of betting.

Alongside sports betting, residents of the province will also be able to wager on non-sporting events – though not politics – virtual sports and horse racing.

All forms of online gambling will be regulated by the Corrientes Lottery and Casino Institute (ILCC), which will also handle operator licensing and enforcement.

Advertising must not be aimed at minors or be “abusive, deceptive or unfair”, nor may it create “confusion regarding the nature of the game”.

Players must be able to set deposit limits and to self-exclude from gambling, and if they are logged in for more than three hours should receive an alert, with subsequent alerts for every additional hour.

Mild infractions such as failure to display licence information will result in a warning.

Serious infractions such as allowing self-excluded players to play will result in a fine.

Very serious infractions, including offering games not covered by a licence or licence-holders participating in gaming, may result in licence revocation.

Licence fees will be determined at a later date by the ILCC.

The province is located in northern Argentina, has a population of roughly 1m people and includes the city of Corrientes.

Argentina’s provinces are currently the process of regulating online gambling on an individual basis.

The province of Buenos Aires has issued online operating licenses to seven gaming operators.

Meanwhile the country’s capital city Buenos Aires – which is legally distinct from the province – gave Gaming Innovation Group (GiG) and local gaming and entertainment operator Grupo Slots approval to launch earlier this week.

Selling, general and administrative expenses came in at $84.8m for the year, while depreciation and amortization cost the company a further $52.3m.

The cost of service and cost of product were $30.1m and $14.4m respectively, and acquisition and integration related transaction expenses accounted for a further $7.0m in costs. Stock-based compensation expenses amounted to $4.8m.

As a result, the supplier made a net operating income of $6.4m in 2020, compared to a net operating loss of $13.0m in 2019.

After interest and taxes, Inspired’s net loss for the year was $29.2m, down from $37.0m the year before.

Revenue in the fourth quarter amounted to $71.7m, up 8% year-on-year. Net operating income for the quarter was $19.3m, compared to a $2.1m net operating loss in Q4 2019, and its net income was $12.4m, compared to a $12.8m net loss.

Total company selling, general and administrative expenses decreased by 23% in Q4, to $24.1m. The decrease was driven by staff cost savings of $3.7m due to the furlough scheme, savings on facility costs of $1.0m, and a further $1.0m reduction in professional fees, while travel and expense costs decreased by $700,000.

Depreciation and amortization costs amounted to $12.4m for the quarter, while cost of service and cost of product were $8.3m and $4.5m respectively.

Stock-based compensations expenses came to $1.7m, and acquisition and integration related transaction expenses were $1.4m.

Its fourth quarter revenue includes $32.5m of VAT-related revenue, the result of a backdated VAT tax rebate received from one of its server-based gaming customers as part of its contractual revenue share agreement.

Adjusted EBITDA for Q4 was $34.9m, including $31.7m in VAT-related income.

The company said October saw the continuation of a sequential monthly growth trend from Q3 2020, before venue closures related to the novel coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic began in November.

By vertical, gaming revenue (related to gaming machines located in betting offices, casinos, gaming halls and high-street adult gaming centres) was $50.5m in Q4.

Virtual sports revenue increased 1.8% to $8.7m, interactive revenue was up 99.5% to $4.2m, and leisure service revenue was $7.7m, down from $21.8m in Q4 2019.

Total company selling, general and administrative expenses decreased by 23% in Q4, to $24.1m. The decrease was driven by staff cost savings of $3.7m due to the furlough scheme, savings on facility costs of $1.0m, and a further $1.0m reduction in professional fees, while travel and expense costs decreased by $700,000.

“October was a stellar month and indicated how quickly we could recover before our land-based businesses went back into lockdown in November and December,” said Lorne Weil, executive chairman of Inspired.

“Our October monthly Revenue of $21.2 million and Adjusted EBITDA of $6.8 million, or 32% of total revenue, was nearly 20% above October 2019 and the highest monthly levels we experienced in 2020, excluding the VAT-related income.”

Weil said that if lockdowns in the UK are eased according to the government’s schedule, the company expects its UK business to return to earning levels seen in Q3 2020, when it generated $17.1m in adjusted EBITDA.

The company said the integration of the Gaming Technology Group, which it acquired in from Novomatic UK Ltd in 2019, had produced synergies which exceeded its previously communicated guidance.

SportsIQ will offer products covering a range of sports and competitions, including NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL, with markets including in-game prop bets such as the result of the next at-bat in a baseball game.

The PlaySports platform is currently live in 16 states and is available to more than 40 gaming clients.

Read the full story on iGB North America.

Vie.bet will become a sponsor of Peruvian esports organisation Infamous Gaming. In addition, it has partnering the Movistar Liga Pro Gaming esports league, a competition managed by local organiser Live Media Esports Entertainment.

The deals comes after EEG last month added the Vie.bet and SportNation brands to its gaming service licence in Malta.

“Our Malta licence enabled us to pursue these great opportunities, and we look forward to further updates on expansions of Vie.bet moving forward,” EEG chief executive Grant Johnson said.

“Latin America is a big esports betting market. We are excited to work with top partners like Infamous and Live Media Esports Entertainment to accelerate the rollout of our Vie.bet brand in the region.”

EEG’s head of esports betting Bux Sayed added: “The exciting partnership between Infamous Gaming and our Vie.bet brand is a crucial first step in our expansion into Latin America.”

“Infamous is a well-known and popular Peruvian based esports team with rosters in titles such as Dota 2, CS:GO and Rainbow 6.”